Whitehaven and Mayport Coastguard Rescue Teams and St Bees RNLI were called out twice last night after reports of incidents off the west coast.
The first call came at around 6.30pm, when callers reported two swimmers in difficulty around 400 metres off the St Bees coast.
St Bees RNLI was already out on exercise and went to the scene. They were able to confirm the swimmers were not in trouble.
On return to the station, they were called to go out again to investigate reports of an inflatable drifting out to sea off the coast of St Bees.
St Bees RNLI soon returned and confirmed the item to be a bunch of birthday balloons.
They recovered these aboard to prevent further calls and to save them from adding to the oceans plastics.
A spokesman for Whitehaven Coastguard Rescue Team said: “These were both false alarm calls with good intent.
“We would like to reassure both first informants that they did exactly the correct thing by calling 999 for the Coastguard and reporting their concerns so they could be investigated.”
